Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
Something of his desperation must have communicated itself to Gerard Weatherill, who held up a finger and disappeared through one of the doors at the end of the passage, returning with a lantern.
“Here. Take it, man. And when you’ve crossed the Pettypont, keep to the right as you pass St. Clement’s. That’ll put you on Wallingford Way…”
By the time Benjamin reached the fork in Wallingford Way, where one road led on to Iffley and the other to Littlemore, his pace slowed. Not because his desire to find Maria flagged, but because the forty-minute tramp gave him time to reflect.
That is, should he not, before he saw her again, knit up the matter?
Not that Lord Dere struck him as a man who would prove false, but in such a situation, would making proclamations to Maria without having first seen the baron be an instance of counting his chickens before they were hatched?
Yes, he decided, it would. Though his disposition tended to be rose-colored, this was too important a matter to be trusted to native hopefulness.
But was it too late in the evening to call at Perryfield? And where, exactly, was Perryfield?
Fortune smiled on him then, in the form of good Mrs. Lamb, who emerged one last time from the Tree Inn to determine whether her servant boy had dumped the scraps where she bid him, or whether he had cheated and dumped them merely out of her sight, as he had the night before.
“Who’s that?” she barked when she straightened, her hand flying to her breast in alarm. The lantern in his hand lit him from below, his jaw and the end of his nose casting shadows upward from which two eyes glinted.
“Good evening. Could you give me directions to Perryfield?”
“I most certainly cannot! This late? Get along with you!” Turning just enough to call over her shoulder she squawked, “Jimmy! Jimmy! Get out here!”
A tow-headed lad thrust his head out crossly. “It’s Tommy. And I did what you told me an’ I’m a-going home.”
“I’ll pay you sixpence to walk me to Perryfield,” blurted Benjamin.
Immediately the boy brightened, and he sprang out the door, heedless of his employer’s warnings. “Where are you going, Tommy, at this hour? He might be a highwayman, for all you know! Or a murderer! And if he robs or murders his lordship, I will be the first person to say you led him there!”
“He’s paying me sixpence!” protested Tommy, without slowing or looking back at her.
Indeed, he set off at a rate which tested even Benjamin’s long strides.
Some part of the admonition must have penetrated, however, for he took care to trot several paces ahead, keeping to the front edge of the glow spread by the lantern, and when they left Iffley behind for a sheep-way through a frost-glazed field, he did ask, “Are you going to murder them at Perryfield?”
“Not that I know of.”
This was apparently enough for Tommy, who then slowed enough for Benjamin to catch up to him. When they reached a stone wall, the boy stopped and smacked it with one hand. “Perryfield wall,” he said, holding out the other for his fee. “Follow this and you’ll see the drive.”
Benjamin paid him, watched him scamper away into the darkness, and then continued along for several hundred yards.
He passed an arch enclosing a stone frame, empty, through which he saw a spreading lawn (colorless in the clouded winter moonlight) and beyond it a stone house, three storeys high, bearded by ivy and punctuated along its entire length with mullioned windows.
Of course a baron must live in an imposing house, or what sort of baron would he be?
Nevertheless, Benjamin’s impulse received its first check.
He had not seen Lord Dere since London, where the baron struck him as a kindly, mild man, henpecked by his niece-in-law.
He knew he was wealthy—he had made the unwanted gift of the furniture, after all—but in truth, after quarreling with Maria about it, to keep the peace Benjamin had tried thereafter to think as little as possible about the man and his obligations to him.
Until the letter came.
And now here he was.
His feet continued to propel him forward, independent of his will, and before he knew it, he had reached the place where the gravel drive widened before the entrance steps.
No carriage stood before the house; no servant waited to hold his horse or to light the way.
The front door stood closed. There were some lights on the ground floor, but not as many as Benjamin would have wished, and on the first floor only one room appeared occupied at present.
Could the baron have already gone up? He was an older man, yes, but nine-o’clock-bedtime old?
I’ll just have a peek in that window before I knock at the door, he decided. If he’s already gone to bed, there will be nothing to be done but to walk back to Iffley Cottage.
With a glance thrown in either direction, Benjamin crept along the front of the house until he stood below the lighted bedchamber. Holding up the lantern, he inspected the ivy-covered stones for likely hand- and footholds and discovered an even more promising trellis.
“Up you go, Ellsworth. Straight up, one peep through the curtains, and straight back down again.”
The high ceilings of Perryfield’s ground floor made Benjamin’s climb a perilous one, especially in the semi-darkness with ivy snapping in his face.
The lushness of the greenery, moreover, hid the fact that the trellis was quite old and that the ivy did as much, if not more, to support the trellis as the trellis did the ivy.
Which meant that, when Benjamin ascended to within five feet of the window, the weight of his boot proved too much for the slat which held it.
Or which failed to hold it.
In one and the same moment, there was a snap, a crunch, a rustle, and a cry of surprise. Then Benjamin plummeted downward to land with a whoof in the (flowerless) flower-bed below, narrowly missing the lantern.
Above him the curtains snapped open, followed by the casement, and a head haloed by golden hair popped out.
“Harker! Ogle! Wood! Burglars! Murderers! Peeping Toms!” she shrieked, as if chanting an ancient spell.
Lying winded and groaning, Benjamin tried to determine if he was (1) killed, or (2) broken in a dozen pieces.
Then he heard doors slamming, feet running, voices clamoring.
And before he could struggle to his feet, he was surrounded by liveried servants bearing lanterns and makeshift weaponry, including a candlestick and an umbrella.
The baron himself soon joined the circle, wielding a magnifier with a polished bone handle.
“Who is it? Have you got him? Who is it?” shrilled the woman above, whom Benjamin now identified as Mrs. Markham Dere.
“Er—never fear, Alice,” replied Lord Dere. “It is a friend.”
“A friend? A friend climbing up the house to reach my window?” she demanded. “Hold up your lanterns! I insist on seeing this person.”
Dutifully the gathered servants raised their lanterns high enough to illuminate Benjamin’s face. Mrs. Dere gasped, swelling with astonishment in her French linen dressing gown. “I’ll be down again directly.”
“Sir, I can explain,” Benjamin began, when the casement slammed shut above them.
“I expect so,” agreed the baron amiably. “But won’t you come inside?”
“Inside” turned out to be Lord Dere’s library, a veritable treasure house lined with countless books, comfortable furniture, and several wooden cases which Benjamin guessed housed the baron’s collectibles, for one tray of insects had been removed to the table.